Essay: Everyone Is Talking About Communities. But What Do We Mean by That?

Protein shakes have one. K-pop stars do too—an impressively devoted one. Even hobbies have one: a community. No product or hobby can do without the imagined collective behind it, which promises a sense of belonging and an emotional home. Everyone talks about community. But what do we actually mean by that?

The fact that we use the term “community” here, even though German offers the rock-solid word “Gemeinschaft,” is worth noting. One can guess why: “Gemeinschaft” sounds like the bylaws of an allotment garden association and comes burdened with historical baggage; it feels like a strenuous “we”—one that demands the effort of participation—while “community” seems to offer a much more lighthearted alternative.

Yet this semantic evasion reveals even more: namely, the fundamental question of our social relationships today. In the 19th century, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies contrasted “community” with “society”: The former, he argued, encompasses organic, familial, and stable bonds, while the latter consists of contractual and impersonal relationships. One could view the contemporary concept of “community” as an attempt to marry the familial warmth of a Gemeinschaft with the emotional detachment and sobriety of a Gesellschaft.

However, true community is never without commitment. It comes at a cost. In the field of “Community Studies,” the Anglo-Saxon social sciences examine the ability of local groups to maintain their cohesion despite economic and social changes, to achieve common goals, and to draw strength from their diversity of voices.

In fact, the idea of community has something mythical, even sublime, about it: People organize themselves, take responsibility for one another, everyone contributes to the success of the stated goals, and everyone shares the risk of failure.

Marketing has successfully appropriated the most electrifying aspect of the idea of “community”: the sense of togetherness that fosters identity, without the social obligations. Membership is established through the purchase of a product or specific media consumption, and suddenly you’re part of a bubble. However, the overuse of the term—which now declares every comment section for a shower gel to be a close-knit community—reveals an asymmetry: a hunger for belonging coupled with a dwindling ability to satisfy it in a meaningful way.

Be part of it for free

After all, a community isn’t just a mood that automatically takes hold as soon as enough people “like” the same thing; it’s a cultural craft—a trade with tools and rules, rituals, and even demands. Like any craft, it withers away when no one takes up the apprenticeship anymore.

It’s easy to forget how much we benefit from hard community work. Every day, we enjoy the fruits of collective action with the same matter-of-factness with which we’ve forgotten that a collective once planted the trees for us.

Consider the political awareness-raising and educational efforts, as well as the social changes brought about by communities, groups, volunteers, and activists.

Most emancipation movements began with a community that fought in solidarity for social improvements. Take, for example, the labor unions that once fought for the eight-hour workday—a standard of modern society that, in the public consciousness today, ranks somewhere between gravity and Wi-Fi.

At the same time, the local newspaper is dying—mourned far too quietly—leaving behind a paradox: Today, we’re better informed about the breakfast preferences of a tech billionaire in California than we are about why there’s been a construction pit right on our own doorstep for the past three weeks.

Public discourse takes place on a national level or in the “Trends” tab, while our own town is left in the dark—and when we no longer know anything about our town, it becomes a stranger to us.

If one imagines society as a vast community of information recipients held together by the daily ritual of shared media consumption, and if this ritual breaks down at the local level, that society loses a mirror in which it can recognize itself as “we,” and regresses to a mere collection of addresses with a shared garbage collection ordinance.

The Lone Warriors and Their Counterevidence

Abandoned spaces rarely remain unmanaged, for a sense of belonging is governed by an “economy of presence”: Where the last remaining structures in rural regions are crumbling, false communities take over the task of creating a sense of home—present and approachable, complete with barbecues and clubhouses. Preventing this development is a matter of democratic urgency that cannot be overstated.

The media and culture industry—often seen as a haven for lone wolves—provides the most instructive counterexamples, because community can be applied both internally and externally within it: Young journalists are forming collectives because this profession has never been one that could be tackled alone; media companies are gathering communities around them; the village movie theater is making a comeback as a “third place” between the living room and the workplace; and fan communities—which do not follow a purely economic logic—are creating a new sense of collective belonging and identity.

Communities are always laboratories of social innovation; as groups that pursue a shared interest and establish their own evolving rules to that end, they foster a sense of connection long before a social contract needs to demand it. So perhaps the most useful definition this magazine can offer is this: a community reveals itself where it can be demonstrated, rather than where its existence must be asserted—the best stories about community don’t need to use the word, because they show how people work together to achieve what could never be achieved alone. It is a practice, something that must be nurtured, shared, and continually renewed. If you want to know what that looks like, just turn the page.